Parricide
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Parricide (Latin: parricida, killer of parents or another close relative) is defined as:
- the act of murdering one's father (patricide), mother (matricide) or other close relative, but usually not children (infanticide).
- the act of murdering a person (such as the ruler of one's country) who stands in a relationship resembling that of a father
- a person who commits such an act
Various definitions exist for the term parricide, with the biggest discrepancy being whether or not the killing has to be defined as a murder (usually killing with malice aforethought) to qualify as a parricide.
A review of parricide cases that include factors other than delusional thinking such as a history of sexual abuse or fraud committed by the son against the family has been published in the forensic literature.[1] The Perri, Lichtenwald and MacKenzie article provides suggestions for parents, social workers; counselors and psychologists who are attempting to mediate in a family whose dynamics are similar to murder cases in which fraud against the family predated the parricide.
Historical cases
- Tullia, along with her husband, arranged the murder and overthrow of her father, securing the throne for her husband.
- Lucius Hostius reportedly was the first patricide in Rome, sometime after the Second Punic War.
- Mary Blandy (1720–1752) poisoned her father, Francis Blandy, with arsenic in England in 1751.
- Lizzie Borden (1860–1927) was an American woman accused and acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother.
- The Criminal Code of Japan once determined that patricide brought capital punishment or life imprisonment. However, the law was abolished because of the trial of the Tochigi patricide case in which a woman killed her father in 1968 after she was sexually abused by him and bore their children.
Gallery
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Tullia drives over the corpse of her Father
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Parricide, capital punishment in Jersey
See also
- Suicide, the killing of one's self
- Familial killing terms:
- Avunculicide, the killing of one's uncle
- Filicide, the killing of one's child
- Fratricide, the killing of one's brother
- Mariticide, the killing of one's spouse
- Nepoticide, the killing of one's nephew
- Prolicide, is the killing of one's offspring
- Sororicide, the killing of one's sister
- Uxoricide, the killing of one's wife
- Non-familial killing terms from the same root:
- Deicide is the killing of a god
- Genocide is the killing of a large group of people, usually a specific and entire ethnic, racial, religious or national group
- Homicide is the killing of any human
- Regicide is the killing of a monarch (king or ruler)
- Tyrannicide is the killing of a tyrant
References
- ^ Perri, Frank S., Lichtenwald, Terrance G., and MacKenzie, Paula M. (2008). "The Lull Before the Storm: Adult Children Who Kill Their Parents," Forensic Examiner, 17:3 NCJ # 226976.
